


Prayer Box

by largoindminor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: And not really very sad, Brother pranks, But at an old age, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8708995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/largoindminor/pseuds/largoindminor
Summary: For wincest writing challenge November 2016. Prompt: "What's in the box?" (Se7en). Dean's curious about the contents of a box Sam seems to be hiding from him.





	

Nondescript. That’s what it was. Textbook nondescript. Small and unadorned. Fade-into-the-background beige. Utilitarian. The kind of cash box you’d see grade schoolers counting change out of at lemonade stands or PTA bake sales. All in all, a completely inconspicuous box. Or it would have been, had Sam not gone out of his way to hide it.

Dean noticed it when they first set up residence in the bunker, and it’s reasonable to assume that that’s the same time Sam acquired it, since hiding something like that on the road would have been difficult. It was pushed up against the wall under the head of Sam’s bed, a fact Dean would have never discovered if Sam had not messed with Dean’s iPod (nothing but Nickleback? Seriously?) causing Dean to plan a retaliation prank that involved shrimp shells under the floorboard.  
  
Sam deserved his privacy, of course, Dean respected that fact enough to not open it. Well, and it was locked. But mostly the privacy thing. Dean put it back where he found it and idly wondered if whatever’s in it will absorb the fishy garbage smell that’s going to permeate Sam’s room in a few days.  
  
When Sam discovered the source of the smell a few days later he didn’t say a word, although he did look pointedly from Dean to the toilet and back one night as Dean was brushing his teeth. Dean, after swishing about a gallon of Listerine through his mouth, called a ceasefire.

It was nothing but sheer nosiness that had him rooting around in Sam’s room a few days after, only to find that the box disappeared from its hiding place. That, more than the existence of the box, piqued his interest. Storing something under a bed wasn’t all that unusual. Moving it once you realize it’s been discovered, is.

Dean occasionally caught sight of it over the years, always a glimpse out of the corner of his eye, passing by Sam’s open door as it was slipped it into some drawer or cubby or rucksack away from Dean’s prying eyes. He considered asking Sam about it from time to time but in the end always decided it was best to not risk the rejection. Logically he knew it wasn’t really a rejection. Logically he knew that Sam was entitled to have privacy. Logically he knew it was his own jealousy and insecurities that would make it _feel_ like rejection. But pain is pain whether it’s logical or not and, as with all things of an unpleasant emotional nature, Dean preferred avoidance.  
  
For their first few years there, Dean never spend much time in Sam’s bedroom. It seemed both of them preferred Dean’s memory foam mattress to Sam’s old springy one (even if Sam did crack a joke or two about the Princess and the Pea at Dean’s expense) and the nights they spent together were always spent there. It wasn’t until after a certain unwanted house guest had taken up temporary residence that Sam made it a point to ask Dean into his room.  
  
Some people cleanse a home by burning sage, Winchesters purify with love.  
  
So it was there, in Sam’s room, wrapped up in little brother arms and post coital bliss, that Dean finally mentioned it. He was lying on his side, sleepy and sated enough to not care that Sam was tucked up behind him in a definite big-spoon, little-spoon configuration. The edge of the box was just visible, poking out from underneath the writing desk against the wall.  
  
“Sammy,”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Whatcha got in that cash box you’re always trying to hide away, anyway?”  
  
Sam chuckled softly behind him, tightened his arms and pulled Dean a little closer to him, “s'all my millions of dollars is all.”  
  
Dean smiled, too warm and content to be put off by Sam’s deflection. “Pshh, it’s probably your secret shameful porn collection or somethin’. Either way, half o'that’s mine you know.”  


“All yours.” Dean thought he heard Sam say, just before he falling asleep.

A few mornings later Dean woke up to find Sam sitting cross legged at the foot of the bed, the box open in his lap as he ran his fingers over hundreds of small slips of paper inside. Dean rubbed his eyes and sat up for a closer look. The slips of paper were all different. Various colors and weights, some he recognized as motel notepad paper, some looked like ripped parchment or blank newsprint, others were just plain notebook paper. All were written on- blue and black and red ink, pencil, marker, something that looked suspiciously like dried blood- though he couldn’t make out any of the words.  
  
“It’s uh, a prayer box. Kind of,” Sam explained without looking up, “It started out as one, anyway. The idea is you write down your prayers and put them in the box and that’s. Letting them go. Go up to god or wherever.  
  
“So, let go and let god? Like in AA?”  
  
Sam smiled, “Yeah, a little. But after a while I didn’t just put prayers in here. I put everything I wanted to let go. Wishes or memories or regrets. I write them out, then they go here. And it’s like. Being unburdened. It doesn’t always work of course. Some things-” Sam cleared his throat and Dean looked up to see his eyes well with tears, “some things are in here more than once. Some things are in here a dozen times or more.”  
  
Sam closed the lid but didn’t lock it, and slid it across the bed to Dean.  
  
“Sam, I- this is private, I don’t need, I mean you don’t have to-”  
  
“I know I don’t have to,” Sam cut him off, “I know Dean. I just, I used to be embarrassed by it you know? By having prayers. By thinking this would actually, I dunno, lighten my soul or something. But all these scraps of paper? They’re all me. Parts of me. And I- I don’t want to feel ashamed of any of it. And I know you won’t- I mean. I trust you with it. With all of it.”  
  
Dean traced his fingers over the edge of the lid, careful and barely touching.  
  
“Sam, I- I don’t know what to say–”  
  
Sam leaned in and kissed him, a fine interruption as far as Dean was concerned, and he found he really _did_ know what to say, it just wasn’t the kind of thing that needed to be said with words.  
  
Dean looked through the box a little that day, though despite being granted permission it still felt like he was somehow invading Sam’s privacy.    
  
_“Dear god, please let me complete these trials” and on the same paper, “Dear god I think I’m dying. Please just let me finish what I started first”._  
  
Scribbled on a scrap of cardboard, “please please please make it stop make it stop”.  
  
Big block letters on parchment, “It wasn’t my fault.”  


_Seven matching mini post-it notes, “Kevin” written on each one._

_Yellow steno pads worth of “Dean’s gone and I don’t know what to do please help me” and “maybe it should have been me” and “god was never reading these” and “the smell of burning hair” and “please don’t make me go back” and “dear dad, happy birthday. love, sam”._  
  
Blue and white card-stock, “dear god I love him so much.”  
  
They never talked about it, after. Sam didn’t hide it anymore. It sat on his desk and collected more prayers and wishes and memories and regrets. Dean added a few as well- declarations, mostly, ones that were still too big for him to say aloud. One year at Christmas Dean replaced the beige metal cash box with an elegant wooden one, charmed and blessed and carved with sigils to protect both the physical construct and the sentiments within.  
  
It would become a constant comfort in their lives. Their secret keeper. Their silent confidant. A place where there was no judgment, only grace and forgiveness. An extension of their love and trust in one another. And so it met its eventual end as anything of worth should, through salt and fire. The last offering it received was not a secret, nor a prayer, but a promise, slipped into its gaping maw as the funeral pyre burned around it.

“See ya soon.”  



End file.
